Fighting causes not yet lost

Human Life Review, Winter 1999 by Fielding, Ellen Wilson

"I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision" (Acts 26:19)

In the fall of 1975, I was a sophomore at Bryn Mawr College outside Philadelphia. I had unearthed from a local used bookstore a paperback collection of articles on the Vatican-II era Catholic Church originally published in the 1960s by National Review. I wrote to National Review seeking additional copies-should they be available-for a few friends, and my letter reached the desk of J. P. McFadden, long-time associate publisher of the magazine and brand-new originator of the Human Life Review. In short order copies of the book arrived, accompanied by one of Jim's trademark notes, banged out on the old Royal typewriter he used until his death.

Throughout the remainder of my college years, I was the grateful recipient of a procession of books, articles, and pungent observations on topics Catholic, conservative and pro-life. Here are a few samples from that collection:

"I enclose [Graham] Greene's classic, and will scout out a missal-also, do you read [Francois] Mauriac? If not, I'll send one of those-marvelous."

"At last, I've found the Mauriac book I promised-and in looking, came across a classic that ought to be a natural for any Bryn Mawr girl(?) [He was referring to Randall Jarrell's wonderful 1950s sendup of a women's liberal arts college, Pictures from an Institution. I liked it so much that I adopted the title for my weekly column in the college paper.] Please keep it handy, as I do not have but one more. I'd love to know what you think."

"I enclose more grist for your mill. This one will certainly give you much more of the history of `how it all happened."' ["It" was the loss of the Latin Mass and assorted abominations following in the wake of Vatican II-Jim was probably referring to one of James Hitchcock's books on the matter-- The Recovery of the Sacred, perhaps.]

"Found the Mauriac in Marlboro-thought you might not have heard of it (he wrote it at 83!)."

"Re Greene book, there are plenty more: the 'sleeper' is `Brighton Rock,' which many consider his best-others say `The Power and the Glory' and he also wrote a real Catholic tearjerker, `The End of the Affair' . . "

That first Greene book was The Heart of the Matter. One weekend evening at college, while a dorm party blasted beneath my room, I read up to the cataclysmic scene where the adulterous hero Scobie sacriligiously receives Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin, to conceal his affair from his wife. Shell-shocked, I wandered downstairs to shake off a bit of the overpowering effect of the writing in the noise of rock music and many people shouting to be heard above it. Then I headed back to see what became of Scobie.

And of course Jim sent me the Human Life Review. I ate up every one of those early, primarily legal, densely argued articles, footnotes and all. From the beginning, of course, Jim leavened them with sharply written contributions from people like Clare Boothe Luce and Malcolm Muggeridge, and appendices filled with previously printed matter germane to his "life issues."

As my twenty-first birthday approached, I wrote Jim from Pennsylvania, asking his advice on what kind of champagne to buy. Eventually, I found myself settling in at the eighth floor offices of 150 East 35th Street, first as summer help and then, after a quick post-graduation trip to England, fulltime.

Mornings began with the opening of the mail-those postage-paid envelopes coming back to us from Jim's fundraising efforts that were the lifeblood of our activities. When a really large mailing was at its height, everyone would help out with the counting and sorting, stacking the cards with their names, addresses and mailing codes in separate piles. Many of these names-and not just those sending in large amounts-became familiar to us, especially those with scribbled comments or bits of life stories we would share with one another. There were handicapped people, or those with handicapped children; older people, on small fixed incomes-all sorts of backgrounds and stories that were both uplifting and very humbling. They made Jim determined to achieve results from their sacrifices.

After everything was sorted, Ed Capano and Jim could chart the relative success or failure of their efforts day by day on pencil-marked sheets attached to clipboards-how primitive it seems, deep into the computer age. Yet at the time the office staff's pride and joy was the one IBM self-correcting typewriter. All the newsletters and fund appeal letters were first typed on that, especially when illness or vacations or staff changes reduced us to using nonprofessional hunt-and-peck typers. Then we tried to proofread each line before hitting the Return key. Otherwise one of us would have to bear the corrections shamefacedly over to National Review's art department, where Jimmy O'Bryan or one of his co-workers would interrupt more artistic pursuits to paste them onto the original, lapsing into a caustic comment or two if we had to come back a second or third time.